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I also use Monodraw, can only recommend with one caveat: @Dear Monodraw developers, if you're reading this, please please please implement discarding text edit popups using ESC, it's been years and I still keep reaching for ESC every time I use Monodraw. I tried decompiling it to binary patch it, but unfortunately it messes up the update mechanism.

This is my most missed app since switching from Mac to Windows. This new kid on the block looks like a solid replacement, though! Will definitely be checking it out.

Absolutely. Handy for making diagrams or just doodling and making custom headers for config files with `fig` and some boxes and shadows!

I used to love monodraw when I had a mac. My daily driver and work machine is Linux now, so I've been searching for a suitable replacement for a while now. This one is probably the best I've seen so far.

I bought it too. I think most of us seem to bought it almost 10 years ago. Don’t use it much, but it is there when needed once in a while.

One thing that bugs me is that I can no longer access any of my Monodraw sketches because I don’t own a Mac anymore.

+++ Monodraw is awesome!

don't forget JavE! http://www.jave.de/

> Pedantic note to people using 'ASCII' in this thread (although Monosketch tool does't claim to be ASCII).

In big ASCII letters on the landing page: Unleash your ideas with ASCII [] MonoSketch is a powerful ASCII sketching and diagramming app that lets you effortlessly transform your ideas into visually stunning designs.

:-)

A historical note: even though the line/box-drawing characters go back to the IBM PC, they aren't ASCII. The PC used Code page 437, which added a bunch of characters to ASCII. To be genuinely ASCII, you need to draw your boxes with pipes and hyphens (| and -).

The worst part about all this isn't the fact the experts can immediately see the inadequacies of the AI tool, it's that newbies are joyously learning incorrectly. How can the Experts of the Future have a solid foundation if their foundation is built on a bunch of "your absolutely right!" LLM corrections?

I didn't even notice that the cap was "shorted", instead I noticed that it had the shorter line (traditionally negative) labeled "+" but connected directly to GND!

Mono draw is in maintenance mode and non-free. Based on the name, pretty sure that Monosketch is an explicit replacement.

Well I can’t speak to ASCII in particular, but I create a lot of mermaid UML diagrams specifically because unlike an image, they are:

- Text searchable

- Easy to adjust

- Supported by a surprising number of markdown viewers.

LLMs can understand ASCII diagrams

Is it common for graphics to be supported in the terminal?

ASCII to me represents something that can work in my term, in my source code, checks into git a bit more sanely than binary does, etc.

I still quite like it

agents can understand them. and you can view them in the terminal

My unpopular opinion is that programming is stuck in the 1970s: a lot of programmers use a 1970s-style terminal window to enter 1970s OS commands, which run on a 1970s processor architecture (which is slowly getting replaced by a 1980s architecture). They use a 1970s editor (which is much superior to the other 1970s editor) to write programs in a 1970s language. ASCII diagrams are just a symptom of this. Hardware is millions of times better than in the 1970s, but programming is stuck in local optimums for historical reasons.

(Not to take anything away from Monosketch, which is cool.)

I use this for traking change with git.

Same reason people love and swear by games like nethack. ASCII art is cool af.

That "seems" is doing so much heavy lifting I got a hernia just from looking at it.

  <mermaid>
  flowchart TD

  %% Power Side (240V)
  subgraph Power Circuit (240V)
    Breaker["240V Breaker / GFCI"]
    Fuses["Fuse Block"]
    Contactor["4-Pole Contactor"]
    Pump1["Pump 1 (240V)"]
    Pump2["Pump 2 (240V)"]

    Breaker --> Fuses
    Fuses --> Contactor
    Contactor --> Pump1
    Contactor --> Pump2
  end

  %% Control Side (120V)
  subgraph Control Circuit (120V)
    Hot120["120V Control Hot (tap)"]
    AirButton["Spa Air Button"]
    AirSwitch["Air Switch"]
    Coil["Contactor Coil (A1/A2)"]

    Hot120 --> AirSwitch
    AirButton -. air tube .-> AirSwitch
    AirSwitch --> Coil
  end

  %% Mechanical Link
  Coil -. magnetic pull .-> Contactor
  </mermaid>

Love this idea. Would be cool to have a wysiwyg for https://ratatui.rs

Same for me. Add a 'paste text to clipboard'-button top center.

[dead]

I remember being able to "draw" these types of boxes/shapes in Turbo Pascal.

This is surely possible.

You need to find the monospace whitespace characters (seems there's a few [0]). Then encode a compressed version of the logical diagram in the white space, steganography style.

Or do something with characters [1] to compress a lot of data into a tiny ball of hair at the end.

Draw.io smuggles the XML in a PNG which I've always admired.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combining_character

Especially with things like github actions creating your releases meaning you don't have to build on your own hardware. You just set up three workflows that build on a windows, mac, and linux image, store the results in temporary storage, with a release workflow that grabs the binaries from storage and packs them up as a binaries + source release.

> he’ll do it

Quick note - be careful of gendering & anthropomorphising large language models, since you’re talking to a non-human machine so should be wary of how it can affect your mindset.

Not the author but I'm making a similar tool currently, and the reality is no because of the nature of it being character based.

You can theoretically have "artistic" polygons where it renders using a mixture of characters to emulate how that grid would be filled if a certain shaped was laid over it but the end result wouldn't be very functional for the purposes of diagramming.

https://cascii.app can :)

It's not an ascii renderer, but a ascii diagram drawing tool

Is there any way to make images accessible other than the alt tag? I'm sure SVGs are more machine-readable, but how would that help vision-impaired folks?

Is it still true with llms being so good at interpreting it? I just tried all the examples on the home page, it works perfectly. In the past couple months I've moved almost entirely back to the terminal because I can just ask my coding agent to "have a look at this tmux session".

Good reminder to keep in mind.

At the same time, I don't think one should necessarily limit your expression based on constraints like accessibility.

Slightly off topic but I am writing an Excalidraw MCP that allows Claude Code and Claude.ai to create Excal drawings and then iterate on them — I gave Claude the ability to “see” the resulting drawing via a tool that runs a rendering pipeline and returns a png to the model. It’s producing the Olympic logo pretty nicely ;-)

[dead]

Doesn't it have those characters via extended ASCII? I seem to recall making boxes with characters back in my BASIC class.

Welllll... I gave Opus 4.6 the repository and a sample .mono export and it nailed the file format. There's something to be said about tools and formats that are easy for human-AI end-to-end operation.

                ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐              
                │        New post hits Show HN:        │              
                │  "MonoSketch — Draw ASCII Diagrams"  │              
                └──────────────────────────────────────┘              
                                    │                                 
                                    │                                 
                    ╭───────────────▼──────────────╮                  
                    ┌┤  Did you read the article?   │─────┐            
                    │╰──────────────────────────────╯     │            
                  No│                                 Yes │            
                    │                                     │            
                    │                                     │            
      ┌────────────▼───────────┐            ┌────────────▼───────────┐
      │     Skip straight      │            │      Hmm, this is      │
      │    to the comments     │            │ actually kind of cool  │
      └────────────────────────┘            └────────────────────────┘
                    │                                     │            
                    │                                     │            
      ┌────────────▼───────────┐            ┌────────────▼───────────┐
      │   Adopt the hottest    │            │   Could I build this   │
      │    take as your own    │            │  myself in a weekend?  │
      └────────────────────────┘            └────────────────────────┘
              │         │                                │            
              │         │                          (alway│ yes)       
            ┌──┘         └────┐                           │            
    ┌───────▼──────┐  ┌───────▼──────┐                    │            
    │  "Just use   │  │"I built this │       ┌────────────▼───────────┐
    │  Vim + sed"  │  │   in 1997"   │       │    Start rewriting     │
    └──────────────┘  └──────────────┘       │ it in Rust, obviously  │
            │                 │              └────────────────────────┘
            │                 │                           │            
            └───────┬─────────┘                           │            
      ┌────────────▼───────────┐            ┌────────────▼───────────┐
      │     Post with mass     │            │ Abandon project after  │
      │       confidence       │            │    exactly 2 hours     │
      └────────────────────────┘            └────────────────────────┘
                    │                                     │            
                    │                                     │            
                    │                        ┌────────────▼───────────┐
                    │                        │    Star the repo on    │
                    │                        │     GitHub anyway      │
                    │                        └────────────────────────┘
                    │                                     │            
                    │                                     │            
                    └────────────────┬────────────────────┘            
            ┌────────────────────────▼───────────────────────┐         
            │          Refresh HN every 45 minutes           │         
            │          to check your comment karma           │         
            └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘         
                                    │                                 
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            ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓         
            ┃             Repeat tomorrow with a             ┃         
            ┃           completely different tool            ┃         
            ┃                                                ┃         
            ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

LLM bots are gonna start back dating commits to look more legit.

That does not make any sense at all in the long run.

Not everything has to be done in arcane ASCII diagrams because of vibes and LLMs.

This is yet another fad destined to be forgotten.